


Catullus 85

by ixofswords



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: M/M, Pretentious, latin poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 21:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14364228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixofswords/pseuds/ixofswords
Summary: some hot garbagé about francis dealing with being an accessory to murder but also gay for richard





	Catullus 85

odi et amo - I hate and I love. It was from Catullus 85. Despite the fact that indeed he was mainly a student of Greek, Francis was too enamored in Latin. Its strange idioms and duality he loved, with the duality made apparent in one Catullus’ most famous works. It was the contrast between obsession with beauty and obsession with violence, which also where he currently lay. While yes, he was legally an accessory to murder, that didn’t take away from trips through the campus gardens to collect flowers to pin to his coat, nor did it take away from softly swaying to Chopin and Tchaikovsky in the late evenings after finishing his work. It was very Wildean, Wildesque, whatever it would be called. He was his own Dorian Gray, but he had no portrait to defer the evils of the soul onto, so instead he placed it back into the world through the evil that is love. It is evil to love, isn’t it, he thought, considering the pain it brings, and the strife to love the way he does. His outlet of evil was to love passionately, because that’s what the world saw his love as.

 

quare id faciam fortasse requiris - How I do this, perhaps you may ask. He whispered this softly to Richard before grasping hesitantly his jaw to kiss his neck. With every touch of his lips to Richard he relieved himself of some of his crime, at least, in his mind he did. As well he urged his friend to release the sordidness of it all, beckoning him to become more than the next option when Charles was sober. The duality would simply confuse the morals, so why not buy some time by distracting what was just? He requested Richard with each kiss to delay their judgement and when he obliged this there was no longer even a though of the consequence or the original purpose of the action. The love was no longer his next move on the board. When Francis finished he knew this was no longer a strategy that would work but did anything matter other than the indulgence of the complicated simplicity that was lying in the arms of a man he loved?

Not in the slightest for that moment.

As Richard fell asleep he tangled his fingers gently through Francis’ hair; an intertwining that was the signature of a contract. Francis whispered to himself that this was life now and perhaps he could forget what he had done if he could just spend every moment in love.

 

nescio - I don’t know. sed fieri sentio et excrucior - I only know that I feel it and that it hurts.

Should it hurt to avoid what one must? Probably, but to him, it was so good.


End file.
